


Life Goes On (Nothing We Could Do)

by tiredperalta



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of a Case, Amy Santiago Loves Jake Peralta, F/M, Jake is recovering from prison, Prison, Recovery, Threats of Violence, compassion fatigue, desensitization, it's kinda sad actually, set after season five
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-13
Updated: 2018-08-13
Packaged: 2019-06-27 01:42:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15675495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiredperalta/pseuds/tiredperalta
Summary: Compassion Fatigue - "an indifference to charitable appeals on behalf of suffering people, experienced as a result of the frequency or number of such appeals."You used to feel everything in full force. You saw all the terrible things humans are capable of, all the things they can do to each other. You saw people in their darkest, most horrible moments. You'd stand on the precipice of annihilation at the whim of the cosmos and feel grief and fear and anger and know there was nothing you could do to stop it.Now, you don't feel anything at all.





	Life Goes On (Nothing We Could Do)

**Author's Note:**

> more info on compassion fatigue can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compassion_fatigue  
> or here: http://www.compassionfatigue.org/

 

_“Compassion Fatigue” - an indifference to charitable appeals on behalf of suffering people, experienced as a result of the frequency or number of such appeals._

 

* * *

 

 

You have been an officer for ten years and you are tired. Tired of work, tired of being wronged. You see injustices every day: unsolved cases, innocent victims, wrongful convictions (you’ve experienced that one upfront and personal and it still terrifies you).

You used to feel everything in full force. You joined the Mafia and returned with a promotion and since then you’ve dealt with all the things other people don’t want to deal with, things they _can’t_ deal with. You used to solve robberies and grand theft auto’s. Now, you see all the terrible things humans are capable of, all the things they can do to each other. You see people in their darkest, most horrible moments. You see parents mourning children, families losing everything, friends killing friends. You’re trying to get someone through the most awful moments of their life – murders, assaults, kidnappings, shootings - and you feel it all with them. You chase murderers for weeks only to lose them and watch them kill again. You stare at the picture of a missing child with their mother only to find their body days later. Every time, you blink back tears. Every time, their stories dig through your heart and make a home there and you have to duck into the bathroom to steady your breathing and wait for the tear tracks on your cheeks to dry. You go home and stare at the walls and sob.

(It gets better when Amy falls into your life. You go home and stare at the walls and she pulls you close and whispers promises and reassurances and you cry into her arms. When she kisses you all you can see are the faces of the broken civilians you met that day but she’ll pour you a drink and play music in the kitchen and you’ll slowly feel alive again.)

One night, you stand on the precipice of annihilation at the whim of the cosmos and wish desperately that it would all just stop. You beg some outside force that you could stop feeling every scream, every sob, every heartbreak, like a death sentence. You stand on the edge of the precinct roof and look at the vehicles moving below. The cool night air breezes against your neck and you’re numb to the cold and numb to your fear of heights so you just watch. You think back to a time when you felt you were truly making a difference. When you first started at the Nine-Nine – a bright young thing, only twenty-four, with an obnoxious laugh and daddy issues – you would solve cases and reap the rewards. When you’d truly help the small part of New York you claim.

You think of your worst moments at twenty-four. When you would tell a man that his house had been burnt down and you’d feel all the loss that accompanied it. When you would see a dead body and choke back the vomit rising in your throat. You also think of a time when you would solve a murder in a day and hoard the praise and medals and drinks and sleep peacefully.

(You are thirty-eight now and you went from witnessing the worst moments of others to seeing your worst moments flash like something out of a film before your eyes. You’re beaten in the mafia and rejected by her. You’re sent to Florida and wrongfully convicted. You’ve been betrayed by everyone – Jimmy Brogan, Stevie Schillens, your dad, the NYPD – and now you’re drowning amidst trust issues and broken promises.)

You feel like you’re trying to fight against the rising tides. You’re desperately pouring water out of your boat but you’re sinking and you’re drowning and there is no one around for miles.

You stare out into the sky, stretch your arms above your head and feel the pull of old scars across your back. It doesn’t really matter how well you do your job in the end. There will always be more criminals. There will always be more murderers and thieves and arsonists and hostages and shooters. You think there are as many stars in the sky as there are crimes and that doesn’t really make sense but you’re delirious with confusion and insomnia so you laugh out loud and hope someone hears you.

You sigh and carefully step down from the ledge and return to your desk. The squad will be there – they’re always there when you need them – and they’ll drive you to the bar and buy you drinks they know you cannot afford and you don’t talk, just listen to them, and you’ll feel something like peace, just for a little while.

(Amy will drive you home and look after you. You’ve long bid sobriety a painful ‘ _goodnight_ ,’ you can barely stand, so she’ll pull off your shirt and trace patterns along the scars across your chest as you lie in bed. You’ll drunkenly say _“I don’t deserve you”_ – it’s the first real thing you’ve felt in a long time.)

Your Captain will take you aside the next day and tell you that there are powerful social forces you cannot control that keep on creating new victims – poverty, inequality, racism, underfunding, an unsympathetic public, an over-interested media. You know he is right. You brushed arms with poverty as a child and met inequality the day you met Rosa Diaz and fought with her through the sexism of the Academy. You greet racism at the door when Terry and Holt walk to work and when Amy and Rosa take briefings. An over-interested media reported you to be a traitor, a robber, a murderer. An unsympathetic public decided you were guilty and put you in prison. You have met the powerful social forces first hand and you hate each and every one of them.

It plagues your mind and the overwhelming feelings of injustice slips through every so often. You see your father for the first time since you got out of prison at your wedding and your mom looks so genuinely happy with him and you panic because you’ve seen divorce and breakups and family structures being torn apart all your life and there’s a woman in a mermaid styled dress waiting to dance with you, with a new ring around her finger and your surname attached to hers. Your father slaps you on the back with a drunken smile and complains that the bar told him he couldn’t buy any more drinks. He says _“It’s the biggest injustice I’ve ever heard of!”_ and you say _“I was wrongfully sent to prison, dad”_ over your shoulder as you walk away.

You repress it because that’s what you do best. But the cases keep coming. And coming. And coming.

Usually, the day someone meets you it’s the worst day of their life. But for you, it’s just another day at the office. The first couple of weeks, months, years even, are hard. So fucking hard.

Until they’re not. At some point, it all becomes too much.

You wake up one morning and look at the woman lying next to you. Her hair is swept over her shoulders and the only time she looks truly peaceful is when she’s asleep. Sometimes, she dreams of you. You know this partly from the times she’s told you over a cup of coffee and toast in the morning but you also know this from the nights when insomnia strikes you and you hear her say your name in her sleep. Sometimes she whispers it like she’s telling you she loves you and sometimes she swears it like you’re being dragged into a cell again. Sometimes she gasps it like you’ve pinned her to the bed and sometimes she groans it like you’ve misplaced your phone or forgotten a case file. She dreams of you, lives off you and you should feel something.

You wake up on this one particular morning and realise you don’t feel, well, anything.

(It terrifies you. She’ll ask you if you slept well and you’ll nod but you can’t meet her eye. She’ll tighten the tie around your neck and pull your badge over your head and you think you feel a flutter of something in your chest but then it is gone.)

You don’t feel anything and the people you see every day don’t even feel like people anymore. They are paper that needs filing. Cases that need solving. Certificates that need signing. If anything, the fact that these people are humans is an _inconvenience_ – their emotions and fear and panic are obstacles that hinder you from doing your job effectively. You sigh out loud because a kid cannot remember anything about the man who robbed him. You groan because a woman doesn’t recognise anyone on the line-up. You shout at an uncooperative perp and push him up against the wall. He is innocent. You get a formal complaint.

(You’ve never had one of those before.)

Something has changed and you _hate_ it. You struggle your way out of bed in the morning, stumble through briefings and commissioner meetings and drink too much at Shaws at night.

You can’t sleep. She wraps her arms around you in bed and it used to make you feel safe but you don’t feel safe anymore. If anything, you feel claustrophobic, trapped. Sometimes you drift into a restless sleep only to get caught in the sheets like ropes around your legs or a noose around your neck. You stagger through to the bathroom and sometimes you throw up and sometimes you just sit on the cool floor and stare at the ceiling.

You can’t eat. You used to order Chinese takeout every Friday. You’d order noodles and she’d order rice and she’d steal half of yours as you rolled your eyes. Lately, you don’t order anything. You down orange soda while she eats and she watches you out of the corner of her eye like she’s trying to figure you out. She buys extra candy bars – the ones she knows you like – and leaves them on the counter on your rare day off. You push them to the back of your bedside drawer, creating the illusion of compliance and she kisses you roughly when she gets home, a silent ‘ _thanks’_. You don’t feel bad about lying to her and that has never happened before.

You don’t find pleasure in anything anymore. Everything takes energy and you don’t have much of that to give. Rosa offers to take you paint-balling but your gun feels heavy in your hands and you’ve seen enough senseless violence to last a lifetime. Gina offers to take you drinking but you’ve sworn off alcohol after you passed out in Shaws and terrified Amy. Charles offers to take you out for a meal at a new restaurant near Brooklyn Heights but you’ve got paperwork to do and you can’t remember the last time you ate anything other than junk food anyway.

(You get home from work early one day and hear Amy calling her mom. You know you shouldn’t listen but curiosity is rooted deep in your nature. You listen until you hear her say _“I don’t know what to do, I’m so worried about him”_ before you make your entrance known.)

She recognises the signs before you do. She makes you do better.

You say no to extra shifts, you fight for every damned minute of sleep that you can grasp at, you begin to feel trauma and sadness in full force again and it reminds you why you pin that badge to your shirt every day. It terrifies you but it’s gradual and slowly, slowly, slowly, feeling returns to your fingers when you file through paperwork and you feel something other than just tired. You think back to a time when you felt everything, when you could feel anything at all, and it pushes you onwards.

You aren’t there yet. Sometimes, you feel yourself slipping into old ways as you shout at Charles or argue with Amy.

(There is still so much time. You’ll see a child with your curls and her button nose and you’ll feel love and peace and hope and everything at full force and you think, maybe, in the end, you’ll be okay.)

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, this is more of a vent fic i guess. compassion fatigue can happen to anyone whether its down to domestic, everyday suffering or more high risk suffering like the police, firefighters, nurses etc. i've brushed with it first hand. it's ridiculously common but often unthought about so i had the idea that one of the nine-nine squad - jake in particular, i feel - would deal with it at some point in their career. i hope you enjoyed it. leave me a comment below (i'll write something other than angst eventually.)


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